


Humbleness and Awareness

by Dracoduceus



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Mentions of Blood, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, non-explicit violence, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 21:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17947112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: Angela wasn’t new to death but this was different.Someone had died by her inaction, by poor choices.No more. This ends now.So with great humbleness and awareness of her own frailty, she picks up her gun and takes aim.





	Humbleness and Awareness

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a rough few days so here's a story I've been sitting on for a while. 
> 
> I've always been fascinated by the Hippocratic Oath and the "updated" version, the [Lasagna Oath](https://www.hospicepatients.org/modern-physicians-oath-louis-lasagna.html). As I was reading it, I came across a line that really spoke to me:
>
>> "If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God."

 " _And her?”_

The water ran over her hands. She kept scrubbing and scrubbing. 

They weren’t clean. There was still blood on them. 

_ “Nah, leave her; no one shoots a medic.” _

Hands caught hers and she jumped. “Stop that,” a voice told her gently. The water was turned off. “You will scrub your hands off that way.” The voice sighed. “Ah, you’re shaking. Come on, let’s get some food in you if you can stomach it.”

She never wanted to eat or drink again.

“Did the little Angel get caught unawares?” a voice drawled. Moira. 

Her voice washed over Angela; it washed through her and she felt nothing. No anger, no hurt. Just...terrifying nothingness. 

“Be silent,” the voice that stopped her said. The hands holding her shifted, one holding her wrist while the other rested on her back to steer her down the hall. 

Angela knew, in some locked corner of her mind, that she should feel angry. That under normal circumstances, she  _ would _ feel angry. Now she just felt like a shell. Like a hollow doll. 

Moira and the voice leading her said more but she didn’t hear it. All that she could hear was the thunderous echo of her failure.

Time must have skipped because the next thing she knew, she was being pushed into a chair and something warm and heavy was wrapped around her. “Be quiet now,” the voice that had steered her said. “She’s had a rough day.”

“I made some cocoa.” another voice said. It was a man’s voice. A nice voice. Friendly. His English was clear but accented. 

Something warm was pressed into her hands. Whoever was in front of her held the mug so that it didn’t drop or spill. Warmth that she didn’t deserve began creeping into her hands which felt cold as death.

Cold as Lieutenant Dahms, who was in the coolers of the morgue by now. They would not need to perform an autopsy; his cause of death was clear—it all lay in her failure. The hands took away whatever she was holding and she crumpled forward.

She tasted salt—blood? Drowning in blood from the lieutenant.

No, it was tears. A gentle hand stroked her hair as she buried her face in someone’s shoulder. She still smelled ash and blood but also vanilla from Ana’s favorite shampoo.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to eat or smell vanilla ever again.

“There,” she heard Ana saying. “Cry yourself out.”

“I’ll warm up some broth,” the man said and hummed when Ana thanked him.

Didn’t they realize? She’d seen many sides of death: beneath her scalpel, in a bed surrounded by family or with only her at their side or cold and stiff when the nurses or doctors came to check. She’d seen the bodies carried in from the field, seen them naked and cold in the coolers in the morgue, waiting for embalming or treatment for burial or cremation per their requests when they were still living. She’d lived through the funerals of her parents. She’d dug injured and dying and dead from what felt like a hundred disasters—did it matter if it was man-made or natural?

Death wasn’t new to her and yet…

He’d been there. He’d been  _ right there in her hands! _ She had been joking with him: he’d have a new scar to impress the ladies, knowing full well that he someone to go home to. Dahms had been ready to propose.

_ Doc, d’ya think Stef’s gonna hate it? Think I can beg some biotics and get healed up before my leave? _ She remembered thinking how kind he was to remember that in the field, biotics were worth their weight in gold and carefully rationed. 

Dahms wasn’t the first patient she’s lost, wasn’t the first patient that she’d laid hands on for a comparatively minor injury only to find out in the shuttle that they hadn’t made it.

Dahms had been there. He should have been safe. 

When she had cried herself out in an ugly, sobbing mess that was beneath her as a distinguished surgeon and battle-tested medic, Ana gently cleaned Angela’s face with a damp washcloth like she was a child.

“There’s a thing about death,” Ana said gently, cupping Angela’s face. “Like people, no matter how used to it we can become, we can always be surprised by it. Death—and people—are some of the cruelest. Death stops for no one, and people are inventive in their depravity.” 

For a long moment Angela stared at her. Ana’s face was gentle but there were deep creases around her eyes—from grief, not laughter—and Angela could feel her grief was if it were her own, as if it were a palpable pressure that sank into her bones.

“Now, don’t be like that,” the man said from the kitchen. “There’s a lot of good left in the world and you do great work to keep it that way.”

_ It doesn’t feel like it _ , she thought but didn’t say. From the self-deprecating curl of Ana’s lip, she understood that, too.

“Come,” Ana said. “Let’s get some food in you.”

The idea of food turned her stomach, somehow made her feel both hungry and revolted. She wasn’t sure that she could keep anything down, especially…

But the Ana’s mystery man put a bowl of vegetable broth in front of her. “If you’re feeling up to the texture, I have some mushrooms that we can add as well.”

She thanked him quietly and he put another bowl beside her, filled with more  [ broth and mushrooms ](https://www.thespruceeats.com/japanese-enoki-and-shiitake-mushroom-soup-2031468) . They bobbed like seaweed but though she wanted to try them her stomach lurched at the thought of chewing anything.

Dinner was quiet, Angela’s silence filled by the inane chatter of Ana and her man. They talked about Fareeha and Angela realized that this must be her father, here for a visit.

Another thing to add to her tally of guilt: taking Ana away from her personal time with her maybe-husband. But they didn’t seem to mind, tugging her along in their wake. It was refreshing to not have things to do, to have things decided for her.

“I need you to teach me,” she said as soon as the thought occurred to her, her voice still thick and raspy with her tears and the understanding of her failure. Her face felt hot and swollen from crying. 

Ana’s man looked concerned. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said gently.

“I will,” Ana interrupted. “Of course I will.”

It only occurred to her much later, when standing in the shooting range with a young Blackwatch agent, just what she was asking.

How many times had she spoken out against Ana? How many times had she argued against one of the deadliest snipers in the world?

And then there was  _ primum non nocere _ —first, do no harm. It wasn’t a part of the modern oath, wasn’t a part of her studies in medical school, wasn’t something that she had truly took an oath to uphold, but it was a part of who she told herself she was.

“I thought that everyone already knew this,” the Blackwatch agent complained. For all his swagger he didn’t seem particularly antagonistic, peering at her curiously beneath, of all things, a dusty cowboy hat. “Ain’t no one never taught you how to shoot?”

It took a moment for her to understand him—though she spoke English fluently, his version almost seemed to be another language entirely. “I know how to use a gun,” she said even though it wasn’t quite the whole truth. As a mandatory part of base life she  _ had _ learned how to use firearms, but she never carried.

She had never used one after those classes so long ago.

The boy seemed to understand this but he didn’t mock her. “Somethin’ rattled ya, huh?” he asked almost gently. He seemed to prickly for it, full or sharp edges as if afraid that she’d take advantage of his supposed weakness, but she appreciated the attempt. “Docs where I’m from, they’re tough as rawhide. I’m sure ya got ‘bout fifty fancy-dancy degrees, but you don’t seem t’ be th’ type.”

Angela thought of Moira and the maniacal grin she wore when she wielded her…whatever she called that evil canister on her back and the purple beam it produced. Of her veiled hints at something crueler than a doctor should be. But Moira wasn’t a medical doctor. Not quite.

Moira, though she could heal, was not a healer—it was not within her nature. She did it because she  _ had _ to, not because she wanted to. 

“I’m tougher than I look,” Angela told him stiffly.

The agent didn’t look convinced. “Ain’t sayin’ that,” he told her. “I’m sure you’re plenty tough. You made it through all that schoolin’—you’re tough like that.  _ An’ _ you made it here so you’re tough like that, too. But—” without looking away from her, he drew the weapon on his belt and shot, making her jump and flinch back at the unexpected report. “—you tough like  _ that? _ ”

Angela peered at the training dummy: not a headshot but still a kill. “I’m not here to enter a dick-measuring contest with you,” she hissed when the ringing in her ears subsided enough for her to hear herself. “I’m here to learn how to defend myself.”

The boy sneered. “Sometimes it’s kill or be killed,  _ angel _ .”

_ No one shoots the medics _ .

_ Did the little Angel get caught unawares? _

Reeling her hand back and curling it into a fist, she punched him as hard as she could.

* * *

How a punch to the face meant friendship Angela would never know, but it seemed to earn Jesse’s respect. Certainly he seemed amused by it, laughing as the medics inspected his bloody nose and only holding still when Ana walked in and pinned him with a dark stare. 

Ana had also pinned  _ Angela _ with a stare, frowning as she watched one of the medics inspect and bandage her hand. “How to properly punch,” Ana had said dryly. “That, not shooting, will be your first lesson. And a piece of advice: Jesse’s skull is like steel. Aim for something softer.” 

“Hey!” Jesse protested but fell silent when Ana raised a brow at him. 

One day, Angela promised herself, she would be as terrifying as Ana was. 

For whatever reason, Ana seemed to have decided to train Jesse and Angela together. It was made difficult by Jesse’s strange brand of friendliness toward her. 

She really didn’t like him—he was too harsh, too  _ dark _ for her to really be comfortable around him—but he had his uses: where Ana taught her the  _ proper  _ way, Jesse taught her how to fight dirty. Where Ana taught her proper form and kicks and rolls and jabs, Jesse taught her headbuts and elbow hits and groin shots. Biting, scratching, bar brawling. 

He was strangely helpful and it drove her crazy.

She confronted him about it a few months after he began “tutoring” her and he laughed, a harsh sound as dry as the godforsaken desert he was from. “You’re tough,” he told her with a grin that was more like a grimace. “You got smarts but not the kind that matter. If you’re not careful you’re gonna get yourself killed one day.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said hotly, tugging too hard on his bandages. 

Jesse snorted though it sounded a bit wheezy. She loosened the bandages further, worried that she was restricting his breathing. “See, that I don’t believe. Not the way you’re thinkin’.”

But he wouldn’t say more, no matter how she asked or demanded.

“Ah,” Ana said later when Angela brought it up. “I told him not to mention that.”

Angela scowled at the older woman. “You don’t think I can do it. You think I’m…” her words failed her and she scrambled for something to say. Ana watched her, serenely sipping her tea.

“I think Jesse is correct,” she said. “But not in the way you’re thinking. No, we both are of the mind that you are certainly  _ tough _ enough but perhaps you are a bit…too naïve.”

Hearing something that everyone mocked her for—Moira most of all—on the lips of someone she had learned to respect crushed her.

“No,” Ana said. “You are certainly… _ tough _ enough but you are also trying to figure out who you are. You are  _ young _ , Angela; you still haven’t figured yourself out despite all your accomplishments and accolades.”

Angela let her slump down to the table. “What do you mean?” she asked weakly, almost a complaint. “I know who I am.”

“You have the pieces of the puzzle,” Ana replied. “And you know the shape of the picture but you haven’t yet figured out how you’re put together.”

Scowling, Angela stood. “I know who I am.” Turning, she stomped out of Ana’s room.

She made the mistake of telling Jesse in the weight room as he stretched his bruised ribs. “She’s right, you know,” he said quietly and she scowled at him. “Nah, hear me out. Not saying she’s the right-est, but she’s right. You’re just tryin’ on clothes to see if they fit right now. Haven’t found your look.”

“Do you think I’m not tough enough to go into combat?” she demanded.

Jesse shrugged and winced. “Nah. What I’m sayin’ is…why haven’t you carried a gun before this?”

She pursed her lips and looked around. “This doesn’t leave this room.”

“Not a peep, Angel.”

He did that. She didn’t like the pet name, it sounded mocking with the accent he added to it, but she knew that it meant that he respected her.

Or so she wanted to think. Maybe she  _ was _ naïve.

“My parents died in war,” she told him vaguely. “I’ve seen what the military does; they’re a cudgel to a scalpel.”

Jesse snorted. “So you’re a pacifist.” It was a statement and not a question, but Angela nodded anyway. “Then why are you here?”

“Overwatch is also disaster relief.”

“There’s the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders…all those fancy non-profits out there that you could lend your help to. So why are you  _ here? _ With a military group?”

Angela scowled, feeling like she was being mocked. “The Omnic Crisis took my parents,” she hissed.

“So what, you wanted to kill some tin cans?”

Again, that feeling of being mocked. “You’re teasing me,” she accused.

“There are hundreds of outreach programs out there,” Jesse said with brutal practicality. “What makes Overwatch any different?” His harsh eyes softened slightly when they met hers in the mirror. “Do you see what I’m saying?”

“It feels like you’re mocking me,” she hissed. “And I hope you burn in hell.”

Jesse laughed as she walked away and Angela wanted to hate him but it sounded too bitter, too self-deprecating. “Been there and back,” he called after her and she almost paused at how hollow his voice sounded. She forced her legs to keep going. “Every time I go out in the field.”

The door closed behind them and Angela wondered if he was right.

* * *

The next day she sought Jesse out. He sighed when he saw her. “You’re right,” Angela said before he could say anything. “May I come in?”

Jesse looked at her and stepped aside to let her in. “Ain’t much,” he said too quickly, too defensively. “Ain’t no fancy suite like the officers got.” 

Looking around, Angela remembered that despite the way Blackwatch did things, Jesse  _ wasn’t _ an officer. He shared a barracks room with five other people, none of whom were there. Among the six of them, they shared a single desk with two monitors. Not a terrible problem since most recruits were assigned tablets, but an annoying thing if anyone needed a desk. 

Angela said none of her thoughts out loud. There was no way that he wouldn’t take anything without becoming defensive. 

“You’re right,” she repeated. “None of it makes sense. I shouldn’t be with the  _ military _ if I hate them this much.”

She sat on the edge of one of the narrow cots and hoped it was Jesse’s. “I don’t know what I’m doing  _ here _ but they helped me when my parents died.”

“Is that it? That’s your only tie here?” Jesse snorted derisively. “What a  _ great  _ reason.”

Abruptly she remembered that he didn’t have a choice—it was this or life in prison for him. The thought depressed her. “Not anymore,” she said softly. “I know people.”

“You stay because you know people?”

He wouldn’t know, Angela realized. He was in a gang where it was kill-or-be-killed, where you had to fend for yourself. Jesse wouldn’t realize what it was like to have  _ friends _ .

Jesse leaned close. “Let me tell you something, Doc,” he said quietly. “I knew people too, back in Deadlock. Be careful where you step ‘cause chainin’ yourself to someone? Well, they might just drag you down with them.”

She was moving before she was conscious of doing so and shoved Jesse hard in the chest. “Then let me be dragged down!” 

* * *

Mercy stood, her legs braced but not stiff. (Even though her insides felt like they were coated in oil in her fear, even though her legs felt like they would crumble at the slightest breeze.)

She drew her pistol, her “pea shooter” as Jesse would jokingly call it, but she knew that he was happy in his own way that she had a way to defend herself. (Her hands wanted to shake. This was a different kind of life and death.)

“This is your first and only warning,” she said and was amazed that her voice didn’t tremble. The men approaching her hesitated. Mercenaries in their own way, they were dealers of death with the luxury to choose who lived and died.

Jesse had tried to explain it to her once. That high you got when you doled out death. It terrified her that he had felt it, had been so deadened to life and death that it was as easy and normal to him as describing a nicotine addiction. 

Ana’s way of describing it was much better than Jesse’s.  _ It’s a great responsibility _ , she had said and Mercy could feel it on her shoulders, now.

The next day when Angela had walked into her office, she had found a present: a framed bit of needlepoint, beautiful in its detail of the modern Hippocratic Oath.

_ If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. _

_ But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. _

Mercy raised her gun and pointed it at the first man. She wasn’t afraid of death—she wasn’t afraid  _ to die _ …but she was afraid for others.

One of the grunts laughed. “Put away your little pea shooter,” he said, his words distorted through his mask. “Who are you trying to fool?”

Now she understood Jesse’s DeadEye, even if what she experienced now was not even close to what he could do. Now she understood the sniper’s calm, their ability to shoot between heartbeats.

_ This awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. _

She didn’t fear death, was no stranger to it. Patients had died in her care before, in her arms, beneath her scalpel. And a patient had died in her care—right in front of her—because of her inaction.

This was no longer about her pacifism; this wasn’t weighing a life, making the judgment on who had the  _ right _ to live or die. 

“We just want  _ that _ ,” one of the grunts said, jabbing a gloved finger at Jesse. “And then you can go.” They all laughed. “Drop the tough girl act.”

This wasn’t about the abstract concept of life and death; this wasn’t about  _ her _ life or death or her morals. This was about the patient lying beneath her, wheezing as he slowly bled out.

She needed to end this now.

A conversation from what felt like a lifetime ago echoed in this strange world between heartbeats.

“ _ Be careful where you step ‘cause chainin’ yourself to someone? Well, they might just drag you down with them. _ ”

“ _ Then let me be dragged down! _ ”

This was  _ Jesse _ . This was  _ her friend _ .  _ Her teammate _ .

The memory of Dahm’s empty eyes as he was zipped into his body bag stared back at her from between the world of the living and of the dead.

_ This was her patient _ and by the God she no longer believed in, she would protect him.

“No,” she said over the roar of the lion in her. “He’s my patient. I will not move.” This was her sin, this will be the burden that she carries all of her life, but she had made her choice.

“ _ Then let me be dragged down! _ ”

She pulled the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun writing it. 
> 
> Feel free to come and yell at me on twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). Be warned: there are a lot of pictures of cats haha. If twitter is not your thing, you can find me on tumblr at [ClassyWastelandBread](https://classywastelandbread.tumblr.com/), but I am not there that often. 
> 
> ~DC


End file.
